In the context of building design, architectural designs (building floor plans, CAD drawings and/or building model) comprise a multitude of elements or assets, such as corridors and rooms, all of which have different requirements for electrical and mechanical services. As such, architectural designs are provided to an engineer or design professional to apply electrical system designs. The engineer applies the electrical systems information using appropriate codes, standards and rules, thereby adding electrical components and service devices to the architectural design to comply with regulatory standards and the client's requirements. During this process, the design professional generates sufficient detail to produce a complete electrical design drawing and/or model (referred to herein as a “complete electrical design”), which includes specifications suitable for construction such as, for example, the location and type of electrical components and service devices and how all such devices are electrically connected. The complete electrical designs are subject to regulatory and/or higher design criteria, and are usually done by a team of skilled drafts people, who may also be design professionals. These professionals also inject individuality and further detail into the final design.
In Applicant's previous U.S. Pat. No. 6,999,907, a process is provided for automating the determination of detailed engineering specifications and the production of electrical components designs from a client's architectural design. In that process, the architectural design is parsed to locate the structure's determinative assets and standards applicable to at least the functional characteristics of the assets are applied, thereby placing the electrical components to result in an electrical components design. Further, the client's known professional preferences can be imparted, while still resulting in an electrical components design that conforms to the client's personal and professional expectations.
An example of Applicant's prior process is the generation of an electrical components design that includes: number and capacity of electrical components which are substantially compatible with the raw architectural layout specifying boundaries of spaces or other such spaces with unique electrical system servicing requirements and location of electrical components to fulfill those electrical system servicing requirements. The electrical components design does not, however, include circuiting and branch circuit wiring and is thus insufficient to either estimate construction costs or to actually construct the design.
To date, the production of a building drawing and/or model including electrical circuiting, service device locations and interrelationships, and branch circuit wiring (i.e. a “complete electrical design”) has still required the application of professional skill, application of various rules of thumb, and estimating.
Some automation has been attempted in the production of complete electrical designs (i.e. circuited designs and branch circuit wired designs). For example, in some CAD programs or building information modeling programs, automation has been attempted through manual user interaction, specifically through the manual selection of similar and adjacent electrical components from the electrical components design, which are to be circuited together, the optimal arrangements being performed by the human user. The user selects a circuit and then selects the components to put on that circuit. The selected components are tagged with the chosen circuit number and a panel schedule may be populated with the total load for each particular circuit. Similarly in branch circuit wiring, some automation has been attempted wherein users manually choose two components to connect and the application draws a simple arc to connect them. In both cases, the decisions are completely those of the user. Further, individual clients or drafts people are expected to distinguish a space/room from a corridor, and then decide and execute for themselves which of the various types of spaces/rooms receive which level of services (e.g. dedicated electrical outlets) and how the service will be supplied (e.g. through the floor or from the ceiling).
Such known manual processes of producing complete electrical designs are laborious and inflexible. It is inevitable that there will be changes in the overall designs which arise during the usually protracted duration between obtaining an architectural design and final issuance of a complete electrical design, which includes circuit assignments, service device locations and interrelationships, and branch circuit wiring. Changes require the human user to repeat the selection steps. For example, any change in the circuiting of a project will also result in required changes in the branch circuit wiring for all affected circuits and multi-circuit homeruns, all of which has to be manually identified and rectified. Further, the resulting level and quality of the details in the complete electrical design is variable due to many levels of design input, from the design professional to the draftspersons. There is a need to repeatedly and dynamically revise the electrical design, in a domino effect, for changes that, for example, affect selection and sizing of conductors and protection at the serving branch circuit panel and upward through the service devices to the main distribution panel. Revisions can result in a fragmentation of an originally well-ordered circuit structure, with deletions and merely appending of newly revised circuits. The impact of such revisions can result in further problems where a particular project is divided into a number of drawings that each must be updated manually.
In the typical large project that requires branch circuit wiring to be in the electrical design, the time between obtaining an architectural design and completion/issuance of a complete electrical design is consumed in the foregoing detailed drafting portion. The immense person hours expended creates two main disadvantages: a significant time delay from project start to completion, and a related increase in cost.
Further, while an architect, design professional or client is constrained by many known and standardized codes, there are also instances where the known codes are inapplicable and personal judgment must be applied. Similarly, there may be instances where the architect, design professional or client's personal standards exceed those of the codes. As a result, each time a design process is commissioned, the personal and professional judgments or standards of all involved in the particular project must be communicated to and be known by the draftsperson/designer. This generally occurs through a working relationship developed over time, so that that appropriate standards and codes are utilized. Often the draftsperson/designer simply utilizes personal and professional judgments or standards that are known, or which are assumed to be preferred by the design professional and those become the rules that are applied to the complete electrical design.
Further, due to the difficulty involved in establishing the actual routing and specifications of conduit, wire, and cable (such routing and materials collectively referred to hereinafter as ‘wiring’), considering possible circuit grouping or routing options, it is a common practice in the industry to simply avoid illustrating wiring on the complete electrical design and to leave the actual routing of wiring to the field installers. Simply, there are a large number of man-hours expended in the mere drawing of branch circuit wiring especially when following the more stringent routing rules for conduit and wire compared to the more relaxed rules for drawing cable. Regardless of this, many projects require that the as-built wiring routing still be added to the drawing after construction. Further, in projects where the design must be completed in building information modeling software, all branch circuit and/or system device related wiring might be required to be included as the 3D actual routing and size thereof.
Accordingly, there is a need for an automated system that is capable of receiving an electrical components design, and providing a complete electrical design therefrom. Such a system would aid designers/draftspersons in achieving, for example, the following: reduced turnaround time, reduced labor costs, repeatedly and reliably applied personalized standards, reduced design errors, and further reduced time requirements from the design professional where professional and standard codes are known and where individual professional standards can be learned and applied.